After relaunching its office in April 2018, with European Union financial assistance, EISA Mali identified four Civil Society Organisations it could support that would be able to focus on citizen observation during the electoral processes around the presidential elections conducted in late July 2018.

2018

Jul 2018 Citizen Observers deployed

The Pool for Citizen Observation, supported by EISA Mali, trained and deployed 84 LTO and 1980 STO all over the country.

From 28 to 30 July an integrated situation room was establised with EISA Mali support in order to deal with the coordination of all observers and the 420 mediators deployed. The data collected in real time would help for early warning during election.

Jul 2018 Citizen long and short term observers trained

The training of LTOs was conducted in early July to enable the observation of the political party campaigning, which started on 8 July, as well as the distribution of voter cards. Managing the competing interests of the different CSOs took a great deal of time and some delays were experienced until consensus and a common understanding could be reached and training could begin.

The Citizen Observation Pool, with EISA's support, would establish a situation room where they would manage the co-ordination of data and reports as they came in from LTOs and the Short Term Observers (STOs). The 1890 STOS were trained in late July.

May-Jun 2018 Citizen observer network created

Working with EISA's four CSO election partners, a network "Citizen Observation Pool of Mali" (POCIM) was put in place. EISA Mali supported the recruitment of 84 long term observers (LTO) and the development of a countrywide deployment plan for the LTOs.